Way out in the cosmos, on the edges of the strange and weird.
There are these giant heads that float in orbit around an even bigger head.
They talk to eachother, mostly about whatever.
But their favorite thing to talk about is the party.
Every several million years, when they are all in line; they have a party.
But untill then, they’ll just plan.
“Who’s bringing snacks?” Meredith’s head will ask.
“Not sure, I’ll ask Bob tomorrow,” Stephanie’s head will reply.
There is this small town where everything is bureaucratic.
Everybody in the town follows all the laws to the T.
Did you know that busses aren’t allowed to let people off unless they are at an official bus stop?
If the person getting off were to trip or get hit by a car, the bus service provider would be liable.
This is true. Even in your town.
So, once upon a time in this small town, a bus got lost.
And the passengers had to live in that bus for the rest of their lives.
Dialogue exercise
Phil Mongeau
Earl “Early” Birds sits at his editor’s desk half jokingly sniffing a permanent marker. There is a story on his desk, marked “Littman March 22”, it is four in the morning of the 22nd. He is wearing his one and only suit, a deep flat black Tom Ford. His dark hair is parted on the side and his five o’clock shadow is showing.
Meanwhile, across the street, the rising star journalist Bianca, who has infiltrated Early’s paper in order to write an expose for Vanity Fair on corrupt and immoral journalists, walks by her “real editor’s” office. She tries to ignore it even when he’s not there as much as possible, given that she got stuck with this strange assignment on the account her body is too nice to be taken seriously, given her already impressive portfolio. Under her arm is a file marked Birds’ financials. She calls up Early on his cell as she leaves her floor.
“Early?”
“Hey Bianca. What’s up?”
“How’s the airport?”
“It’s okay. What are you doing up this early?” Early clicks play on his iTunes, background chatter starts up in his office. Bianca stops and waits as she listens to the suddenly active airport behind Early’s voice.
“I’m cleaning up the cover piece for you.” She begins to walk again, now entering the street.
“You’re not going to the office, are you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No reason.” Early ducks down behind his desk and then pokes his head up and looks at the elevator. “So how’s the story coming along, kid?” Early high jumps over his desk and closes his office door.
“It’s really coming along,” Bianca gives a snarky I’ve got you now smile. “I actually think I’ll be done by this afternoon.”
“Well, that’s great.” Early wondered how close she was and if he had enough time to escape. He remembered his motto “if you’re waiting for the opportune moment, it means you’ve just missed it” - Jack Sparrow. Early finishes the glass of gin on his desk and rushes out of his office. He sees the elevator sign light up.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“Oh not, you. I’m, um, boarding.”
“Then why is it suddenly quite?”
“I’m in the bathroom, and I’m boarding, that’s why I said shit, cause I need to get out of here.”
Early rushes back into his office and stops the chatter sounds. He can hear high heels coming his way.
“Bianca, can you do me a favor and yell, just like scream into your phone.”
“What? No.”
“Fine.” Early accepted his fate as Bianca steps into his office. They both had their oops faces on.
“What are you doing here?” Sais Bianca
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m finishing the story.” She quickly flashes the file, and then proceeds to hide it behind her back. “Why aren’t you in L.A?”
“Because I took an earlier flight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Why?”
“Because the story on your desk is marked the 22nd.”
“…Why are you here again.” Early eyed his computer file marked “banking.”
“Cover story. Can I see it?” she pointed to the story.
“We’ll trade.” Early stood up and touched the file behind her back. She looked at his laptop as he looked at the file behind her. Bianca swallowed.
(Source: p-e-r-e-g-r-i-n-e, via newhybridkilla)
Hot Water
By Phil Mongeau
Ryan held his breath underwater; trying to see to the other side of the spa sized hot tub. Chlorine and other nameless chemicals stung the undersides of his eyelids as he squinted. He ran his fingers through his hair as he heard his blackberry ring. Ryan blew out of his nose, as he emerged from the water. He held his eyes closed tight, hoping they would stop stinging. His blackberry made a nest for itself out of the white hotel towel. He dried his hands, careful to not knock over any of his empty beer bottles. He reached over the tub’s side like a seal on its stomach. Blackberry in hand, he sat back down and watched a couple of girls talk quietly to each other, as they kept him in the corner of their eyes.
Ryan sniffed and gave a cattish smile to the girls as he answered his phone, half expecting it to be his boss.
“Hello, Ryan here.”
“You promised to be there for me. You said everything was going to get better. Is that what you told me?”
”What? Who is this?”
“My name is Julie, I called you guys a month ago.”
“I- I think you have the –
“Ryan? Your name is Ryan?”
“Yes.”
“Ryan, I have a revolver.” She cried.
Ryan looked around, for an answer to her question. He looked at the girls across from him, at the lobby through the big glass doors, he looked at a plane in the sky. He searched for someone he could give the phone to, but he couldn’t find any negotiators, or psychologists or whoever normally handles these situations. He was completely alone.
“Please put it down.” He said, trying not to be too loud.
“I’m going to put a bullet in, and then you’re going to listen as I play roulette.”
“Please don’t. Let’s talk instead. I’m a great listener.” Ryan begged.
Ryan looked up at the girls in the tub for help, but they were gone.
“You already tried that. It didn’t work. So, now you get to listen to this.”
Ryan put his ear to the receiver; he could tell he was on speakerphone. He heard the barrel snap shut and spin.
“Please Julie. That’s your name, Julie? Please put the gun down.”
“You promised that you were going to help. You said that everything was going to be okay.”
“What happened?”
“You want to know what happened?”
“Yes. Please tell me.”
“You promise to listen this time?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Promise me everything is going to be okay.”
Ryan swallowed and held his breath.
“Everything is going to be okay, Julie. I promise.”
“Ryan, I want something in return for what I tell you; it’s not fair that you listen and I have to trust your hotline again. So, for every question I answer, I’m going to pull the trigger.”
Ryan exhaled and his voice shook. He wanted to tell her the truth, but couldn’t risk it.
“Please don’t do that.”
“Ask me something Ryan, listen to me, like you promised.”
He could hear the hammer being pulled back over her broken voice.
“Where are you right now?”
“I don’t know. In the city I think.”
“Okay, now don’t pull the-
*click
“Julie.” Ryan began to cry and laugh. ”Julie, don’t do that again. Put the gun down.”
“Ask me another question, Ryan, or I’m going to put two bullets in.”
“You’re going to pull the trigger to no matter what I say! This game isn’t fair, it’s rigged for both of us to lose!”
“It’s not fair? Where was this honesty last time? Why couldn’t you have told me that last time? But no, you told me to keep going. Next question!”
Ryan gave a quick scream and tried to pull his hair out. “Why don’t you call your family or fiends?”
“I’m not going to do that. That was your advice last time, that’s what got me here.”
“It wasn’t my advice. Don’t pull that trigger, Julie!”
“Why not?” She screamed.
Ryan listened to the receiver for the click sound. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He prayed that he could hear it, once more.
*click
“Julie, I want to help you. But I can’t do it under this pressure. Please put the gun down so we can talk. I don’t understand what it is you want from me. What do you want?”
“I want to die…that’s three.”
“Julie!”
*click
“Julie, this is a telephone conversation. I can’t go to you and take the gun away. All I can do is talk. All I can do is listen. So let’s work something out.” Something inside of Ryan had snapped. “If you put the gun down, I’ll ask you all about it. But until you do that, I’m not going to say anything.”
“No. I don’t like that.”
….
“I’m the one with the gun, Ryan. You can’t tell me what to do!”
Ryan could feel what was about to come next.
“Hear that?” She opened the gun and slipped in another bullet. “You’re going to listen. And you’ll talk, you’ll ask questions. You’ll see.”
Ryan stuck to his guns for as long as he could. He thought back to his first job interview, his first take-all business deal, his first sublet. Ryan could no longer feel the jets on his back, or hear the planes in the sky. He could hear nothing but his own thoughts. They were so loud; he wanted to smash his head against the concrete until they bled out of him.
“Fine! I’ll ask another question…why did you call?”
“You already know. The reason is on those stupid little brochures you give out. All suicide attempts are just really cries for help, right? So, this is me; crying for help.”
“And I’m here, ready to help. Just tell me how. I’m listening. I’m here.”
Ryan felt like he was struck by lightning while in a crowd of millions. He wished he had never picked up the phone. Ignorance is a bliss he will never know again.
When the sound entered his ear, Ryan held his breath. His face was red and bruised with the outline of the phone. He couldn’t help to think about Julie having to move through miles of telephone wires and airwaves in order to reach him. When the sound entered his ear, his insides jumped, trying to escape, trying to get as far away from Julie as possible.
He wished he heard the sound of an empty chamber. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard. But no, he had to hear the dead battery tone.
By Phil Mongeau
Beth walked by the rows of books, carefully eyeing each one of them. The dark red, black, sky blue, and beige spines stood out of sequence like a rack of wild flowers taped against a brick wall. Beth was not looking for any kind of book in particular; this was just her Saturday morning ritual. She was to wander through her CEGEP library until something stood out. Then, she would read it until she got bored. This weeks’ category was economic and philosophical theories of early America.
She poked and probed her blueberry yogurt with a soup spoon she kept in her backpack. A china red book with golden cursive along the side caught her attention, like a rogue balloon floating away on a clear blue day. Her lips moved as she read the title, The Wild Man Within, she held her yogurt in one hand and took the book out. Beth would always look through the book space at the other side of the shelf in hopes to see a cute boy. She had never had much luck with this game, but she felt that it would one day pay off, like it would in a Taylor Swift video.
No cute boy, she thought, as she pushed her glasses back up her ski jumpy nose. She opened up The Wild Man Within, and noticed it was no philosophical or economic assessment of post-revolution America. It was about the idea and mythology of the wild man and how he affected urban societies throughout time in Europe. “Wild Man” in hand, she began to walk towards an empty seat at the end of the hallway of books. Before she was in the respected circumference of “this is my seat, go find another,” a boy of about her age quickly snatched the chair and plopped down.
Beth sighed quietly and was ready to turn around to find another seat when the boy’s stack of thirty some odd magazines caught her eye.
“Are you really going to read all those,” she poked her head over his shoulder, “New Yorkers?”
The boy turned around in his seat and looked up at her, his mouth opened about half an inch. She thought he looked like Rob Lowe from St. Elmo’s Fire, minus the big hair.
“Um, no. Not exactly. I go to the back and try to fill in my own joke captions for their weekly cartoon. And then, uh, I compare mine to the winners.”
“Really?” She said, Beth smiled with her eyes, “Can you show me?”
“…Um, sure.” He smiled back and gently cleared his throat.
The boy took the top Magazine and opened the last page. The drawing was of a man watching six cats make a standing cheerleader pyramid in his living room.
A moment went by as they both stared at the picture and tried to impress the other as quickly as possible with a clever caption. She held her yogurt behind her back, worried it would gross him out for some reason. Beth thought to herself how much harder this was than she anticipated.
“Any ideas?” he said looking back up at her. He noticed she was closer and her hair nearly touched his shoulder.
“No, you?”
“How about, something like,” he mumbled, slightly embarrassed, “Well, there goes my new years resolution.”
She laughed out loud and his shoulders dropped with tension relief.
“So do you do this, like, regularly or something?” She said.
“Yeah, kind of.” He nodded.
She could feel the moment fleeting but did not want it to end.
“Do you want some company?” she asked.
“I would love some, sure.” He scrambled out of his seat and dashed to another table and took a chair from a group without asking. He shoved himself next to her and opened another magazine. She put The Wild Man Within to the side of the table along with her yogurt, leaned forward onto the table and felt warm.
Plato, Nietzsche, Pebbles
By Phil Mongeau
God is talking to me. God talks to me from behind his glass walls. Poor God, stuck behind his glass. He’ll never fit in my bowl. He’ll never come for a swim. God’s skin is blue but his head is red. His noise hole opens and moves. His voice shakes me.
“I read last night, that you can only remember one minute at a time. Cool huh? See you later skater.” His noise hole curves upward. And he hovers away and out of my sight.
Good God. Is that true, could that be true? Am I going to forget this? How sad, no wonder I feel stupid. I can’t learn anything. Like maybe God has tried to teach me how to swim on my back. Cool, I bet I can do it. No. No. Keep thinking about this. Wait, does that mean the last minute of my life will be spent with one memory. One existence. My life will only be worth one minute. If I could cry, I would. But I can’t. No. No. Stay on topic. I have to write this down. Before I forget. I am going to have to find a pencil. Maybe it’s under the castle. Has that cool castle always being there? If I could remember if God ever gave me a pencil, this would be a lot easier. Wait, if I die in pain or fear. Then that will be all I know. My whole life might as well have been in pain. And even if it was, it wouldn’t matter. Maybe I should kill myself right now. So that way I have live my life in knowledge and some kind of actual intrinsic worth. Yes. That’s a great idea. Jumping time. Here I go…. and there we go. Boy this floor feels weird; it’s a lot softer than the pebbles in my bowl. Hmm, everything looks different from down here. Strange, I can’t really explain it. No. No. Stay on task. I have intrinsic worth. My existence has been productive and in knowledge. I think therefore I am. I think therefore I am…
Holy shit. Where am I? Why cant I breath. Oh God. Oh God, where are you? Why aren’t you here. Why have you abandoned me? God, I’m sorry. Save me, I’m scared. I don’t want to die. It’s getting dark. It’s getting cold. God…Feed me, I’m hungry.
“Pebbles? What are you doing down there? There you go buddy.”
Thank God. You came back. I love you. And I know you care, too. God cares about me. The water feels so good. Mmm, that fresh water in my gills feels great.
God took something off of something and put it into his skin.
“Forgot my wallet. Have a good day Pebbles.”
Wallet? Please. I forgot that I had no real intrinsic and tried to kill myself. Wait a second. I can remember! Wow! That’s an amazing feeling. Oh, the possibilities. This is the best moment of my life, all three minutes of them, I guess. But hey, life has got to start somewhere. And what a better beginning to what I’m sure will be a great life.
Hmmm…where am I? Boy, I’m hungry. Hey, who am I? And what kind of cool stuff is in that castle, wow!
Phil, The High Functioning Idiot
By Phil Mongeau
This is a true story.
It was Phil’s last year in a Catholic School in Montreal and it was a miracle that he had made it that far. When behaving the way him and his friends did at a relatively strict school, the expulsion margin tends to become thin. They were known amongst the administrators and the teachers as the usual suspects in the hallway; a title they were sorry for; sorry for getting caught.
It took the bus a few hours to transport half the graduating class outside of Montreal to a nunnery somewhere in the countryside for their last and ultimate school retreat. On top of being a nun farm, the old, churchy building acted as a working alcoholic rehabilitation center. This was to be their home for the weekend as they “retreated.” It had dorm rooms, a cafeteria, several smaller prayer rooms and a main hall used for mass.
Once inside, they received their room keys and spread out accordingly. The rooms were all identical and yet somehow each was duller than the last one. These closet sized sanctuaries from booze were cold, drafty and smelt of cleaning products from the early nineteen nineties. The beds were no longer than six feet and the sheets were those sorry poly-blend blankets that normally come in either salmon pink or moss green. The furniture was wooden and generic. There was a small desk in the corner. We all agreed that the recovering alcoholics would stay in the very same rooms because of crudely carved messages in the bottom of the desk drawers. Some of these small messages were simply the names of former occupants, while other messages were small pats on the back, claiming, “Getting clean is the right choice.”However, not all the messages were heart warming sentiments, many warned it’s readers of pain, death and disappointment. In every room was a bible and a small crucifix, which at this point in their Catholic School careers, was no surprise or bother, even to the most hardcore atheist students. On the wall opposite the door, was a window over looking a street, some trees and a field of grass about the size of a hockey rink.
Phil explored his room further and noticed that the window could be removed. His window was directly over the front porch’s roof and overlooked the street and some nature.
The next day, the sun was at its apex in the sky as the boys played a game of what was supposed to be “touch” football. The heat was getting to some of the boys as they began arguing about technicalities such as the speed in which the d-line counts its’ steamboats before rushing. Immature quarrels aside, Phil’s team won the game and that put him in high spirits given that he had not played that well in a long time.
Phil decided it was time for a shower and proceeded to the second floor where his room and communal bathroom was. On his way up the stairs, he could see a handful of his teachers congregated and cramped over a table in the cafeteria. Along for the retreat were two priests; one who taught Religion at his school and another who was a young South American training to become a Jesuit.
It could have being the refreshing shower, or the game or the general good nature of the retreat, but Phil’s serotonin levels raised and toppled over into the decision making part of his brain like the poorly designed flood walls of the Titanic. And like the ship, Phil’s higher reasoning was about to sink.
He was walking back to his room in a towel and talking to a friend he called
J-Ball.
“Yo, check this out.” Phil said through a wide smile.
Phil opened his door, and proceeded to fiddle with his window until it popped out. He placed it on the bed and gave J-Ball the “stay here” look. Phil threw off his towel and climbed out of the window.
The sun and the air felt sensational. He had never been this free, he could not give the smallest shit about anything that was about to happen. But little did Phil want to admit, the act of running naked on the roof of a nunnery and alcoholic rehabilitation center was not only dumb but down right illegal. However, even though like all sixteen-year-old boys, he has had his share of delinquency and depravity, it just felt right. There was an unnamed difference between streaking on top of a house of God and hiding stacks of beer in the unclaimed locker of an expelled buddy.
But, nothing good lasts forever. So, when he got bored after twenty seconds or so, he decided to return to his room. Without checking first, Phil went straight into the window and then there, hunched over and butt naked in the window frame, he looked over to the room’s door. J-Ball; the coward, had fled the scene and had not even thought to close the door. And so, in his place stood the young Jesuit. Phil’s heart skipped at least three beats, like if it was going for some record.
“Dear God,” Phil thought, “what horrible way to die.” Then, a miracle happened; the Jesuit spoke.
“Not ever again.” He said. He then closed the door and walked away in complete bewilderment.
Phil climbed down from the windowpane and stared at the floor. A smile made its way onto his face as he thought of how much the guys downstairs are going to love this story.
You have a favorite novel. Chances are other people love it too. And sometimes, just sometimes, they celebrate that novel in ways that put Trekkies to shame: 10 Cult Literary Traditions for Truly Die-Hard Fans. (Edgar Allan Poe! Oscar Wilde! Jane Austen!)
